Why Brent Venables Believes Oklahoma Will be a 'Well-Oiled Machine' With Jim Nagy

The OU coach reiterated his faith in the Sooners' new front office setup at SEC Media Days.

Oklahoma head coach Brent Venables is introduced during SEC Media Days at the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta. | Gary Cosby Jr. / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

ATLANTA — Jim Nagy struck early at Oklahoma. 

The OU general manager had been on the job just over a month before he landed California transfer running back Jaydn Ott and Stanford interior offensive lineman Jake Maikkula. 

The moves showed Nagy meant business in Norman. He added to the roster at two positions lacking depth, and he did it before the floodgates opened fully in the spring transfer portal window. 

But the Sooners have yet to find the same success on the recruiting trail with their new front office model. 

Oklahoma currently ranks 33rd in 247Sports’ Team Recruiting Rankings for the 2026 class.

Any recruiting class is going to take a hit when the program’s head coach enters the season on the hot seat, a reality that Brent Venables will try to work himself out of this fall. 

But with Nagy and his staff arriving so late in the recruiting process for the 2026 class, nobody in Norman is judging the new football scouting operation solely on the 2026 recruiting haul. 

“Love Jim Nagy. Love his staff… He's first class,” Venables said at SEC Media Days. “…. We're literally just kind of starting the root system. He hired his last few guys just several weeks ago. Went through our very first cycle that was halfway done when he jumped in.

“I think you'll really see the fruits of the labor of the vision of what we want to do and what we want to become through that space over the next couple of cycles recruiting.”

With it being Nagy’s first high school recruiting cycle, there’s plenty for his staff to learn and adjust in the future. 

“This is the first time we’ve ever been together, and you’ll go through it, you’ll learn from it, get better from it,” Venables said. “My job and our job is to help the transition and try to give the lens of dealing with the age group, the maturity, maybe some of the inroads and the doors that will be easy to open.

“Hey, this is college football; this is how it’s worked for a long time—right, wrong or indifferent. It’s always evolving, as we know, there’s a new modernized version of college football now that takes maybe a different lens to navigate.”

Nagy has embraced having an open conversation between his scouting staff and OU’s coaching staff from Day 1. 

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• Brent Venables IDs Freshman, Young Players He Thinks Will Impact Oklahoma
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“I’m here to help… I kind of thrive in a collaborative format,” Nagy said in March. “So that's what we're going to do.”

College football continues to evolve.

Venables has welcomed the new front office model. Nagy’s staff will have Oklahoma better prepared to attack the portal, and his experience dealing with agents at the Senior Bowl should translate to NIL negotiations and the new revenue-sharing model. 

But when it comes to the relationship-building piece of recruiting, Venables believes his coaching staff will still play a prominent role. 

“In some ways, through all the change, nothing’s changed,” he said. “Then in many ways, some of our processes and our structure certainly has. I feel like it’s going really, really well. It’ll never be perfect; it’ll always be imperfect, actually, and then you always try to make it best that you can. But the resources that we have, I just don’t see any limits when we get the roots deeply in the ground, that we’ll be a well-oiled machine.”